Friday, September 05, 2014

Idolatry: Making God in your image, with the best intentions

Long ago when I lived in the Bay Area there was an Episcopal parish there that Byzantinized its liturgy and was attempting to be "Eastern rite." They didn't have any organic link to Eastern traditions, though; they were mostly proto-hipsters and seminary students from the GTU who wanted to have a less vanilla liturgical experience than the standard California-style 1979 BCP liturgy.

Never been; only really been to San Francisco once. Every few years somebody brings them up. I am expected to hate them. Critical? You bet. Hate? Nah. Their heart's in the right place and they're very talented, but their head is God knows where. ("Self-evident truths" such as homosexualism.) "A less vanilla liturgical experience." Same appeal as Anglo-Catholicism decades before but without the theology. It's not straight-up Byzantine either: mixed 1979, Byzantine, a couple of other rites, and their own prayers and ceremonial.

2 comments:

Hard for me to see those blasphemers as having their heart in the right place. They've turned from the Church calling sinners to repent of sins to the sinners calling on the Church to start describing heinous sins as virtues.